Think You Very Much

Month: January 2013

  • Learn The Boring

    Years ago I did a lot of pay per click affiliate sales using Google Adwords.

    For reference, the most I ever spent in one day on ads was nearly $10,000 (something like $9,800; Jan/Feb 2008 Adwords screenshot for just 2 campaigns during this time) and I always had a daily positive return on investment. If you weren’t profitable day-to-day then you weren’t doing it right.

    I wasn’t the best – most of the game was simply testing a lot of offers and related ad, keyword, and landing page combinations – but I was pretty good.

    Getting to that level (“pretty good”) was straightforward. It was all based on a few years I spent learning boring stuff. How to edit an image in Photoshop. How to create a landing page. How to make a website do this or that. How to do keyword research. How to do market research. How to write a good autoresponder e-mail sequence.

    In those days I got lots of e-mails from people asking how to do what I did.

    • “Can you teach me?”
    • “What do I do?”
    • “If you had to start from scratch, where would you start?”

    I was always happy to answer these e-mails, because the beginning was to learn the fundamentals, learn the boring, and I was well-versed in that. This was the stuff most people wouldn’t learn because they expected to jump right into huge ad spends and profits like it was some kind of magic.

    The way to learn the boring for this particular business was to go through Google’s own free Adwords training. It was long and thorough and it gave newbies a perfect framework to build off of if they were willing to take the time to learn.

    This was the great filter. (I love filters. This whole website is a filter.) I could legitimately help everybody who asked (“Learn this and e-mail me for Step 2 when you’re done.”) while simultaneously not waste my time helping people who didn’t want to help themselves. The magic bullet golden ticket types.

    This Adwords training – which could quite literally change a person’s whole economic future – could be completed in a focused weekend, with a little time left over for watching cartoons and slacking off on facebook.

    I recommended this training to dozens of people. I can’t even imagine how many because I didn’t keep track. I knew I’d never hear from most of them again.

    Do you want to guess how many people went through and learned the boring?

    It took me a good hard think to come up with just two people. Maybe there were more, but I remember two who e-mailed me. One of whom went on to generate $XXX,XXX/year using Adwords. (The other did well, but not quite in 6 figures.)

    If you want to excel at anything one of your first steps is to learn the boring.

    I’m all for the whole “do what you love find your passion travel the world sip margaritas” idea. But the truth is it’s never quite like how others sell it to you. Anybody who you respect is working their ass off. What you don’t see is what goes into it. You only see what they want to show you. You don’t see them working nights. Working weekends. Hustling. That’s the the stuff that makes them successful.

    It’s tempting to skip this stage. It’s even very easy. Especially if you have some disposable income to spend on Elance. For many people that’s not a great option. Which means your options are either getting nothing done or doing it yourself. And we both know getting nothing done is for losers.

    More than anything, learning the boring is about not being helpless. If there’s anything that proves you’re an adult it’s being self-reliant and learning the boring is about becoming self-reliant. There’s an unparalleled sense of pride that comes from cooking a nice dinner from scratch for the first time, or building a website, or even from writing your very first “Hello World!” script. These are all signs of self-reliance and all come from learning the boring.

    Interestingly, happily, when you begin learning the boring you might not find it boring at all.

  • No Negativity Challenge Lessons Learned

    Last month I did a “no negativity challenge.”

    The goal was to stay away from negative words and conversations or steer them towards something positive. In truth, it’s a near impossible task to completely guard ourselves against negativity. That might be why I felt like it would be an important challenge. I like to think I’m a realist as opposed to an out and out optimist and I really just wanted to see what would happen if I paid attention to the negativity from myself and those around me.

    So what did I learn last month?

    1. Many (most?) conversations devolve into something negative at some point.

    As a result I avoided a lot of conversations, especially via Skype and Twitter.

    I’d love to figure out why this is the case (maybe it’s me?), but almost every in person or online conversation I had took a negative turn at some point. Usually a complaint about the weather, a beverage, food, a person, the world. Nothing necessarily extraordinary, but complaints none-the-less. I was part of this sometimes as well, though I was often able to recognize it and change course thanks to the challenge.

    2. Sometimes I felt stifled.

    In some ways I felt stifled because I couldn’t mention something or express my thoughts fully. That said, I don’t know that it’s beneficial to state negative thoughts and feelings except in certain circumstances.

    There are a few ways to look at complaints and figure out if they’re beneficial.

    • Complaining about things you can’t change is useless. (Weather, for example.)
    • Complaining about things you won’t change is senseless. (Your job or relationships, for example.)
    • Maybe the only time complaining is actually positive is when you use it to fan the flames of change.

    In other words, if you’re using a negative thought or feeling to motivate you then more power to you. If you’re using it just to complain then stop.

    3. Living without news is not only beneficial, it’s necessary.

    I used to check CNN.com, Google News, and Reddit a few times a day prior to this challenge. I diligently used the Self Control App to block them for the first couple weeks of December. At that point I often forgot to open Self Control, but I wouldn’t visit the sites anyway due to the newly broken habit. It was outstanding.

    I still got news, of course. Everybody on Twitter and Facebook seemed to have an opinion about the school shooting in Newtown, Conn. and I heard all about that immediately. It didn’t get me down as much as it probably would have in the past because I was tuned out of the majority of the coverage.

    While I think it’s important to know what’s generally going on in the world it’s not necessary to know all the details. If you’re a journalist or a pundit then yes, it’s your job to know. But if you’re a regular person you’re doing yourself a disservice by exposing yourself to drama and negativity that doesn’t much concern you. Especially when you have no power to affect any change.

    You’re better off reading a book, listening to music, spending time with loved ones, or even doing absolutely nothing. If everybody took a 30 minute nap instead of watching 30 minutes of news coverage I have a strong feeling the world would be a decidedly better, happier, and at the very least more well-rested place.

    4. I had to stop reading the bible.

    I’ve been reading the bible (King James via a free iOS app) so I can be smarter about it. It’s been 20 years since my forced catechism classes and I didn’t remember all that much detail, but this experience has been telling. To find the positive parts of this book you have to cherry pick as they conveniently did for us in catechism and church. (Exodus 23:9 “thou shalt not oppress a stranger”; I can dig that.)

    “Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.” – Isaac Asimov

    Death (“And all flesh died that moved upon the earth …”), destruction (“And every living substance was destroyed …”), evil (too many quotes), misogyny (“and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee”), people who live to be hundreds of years old (Noah = 950 years old; not negative, just ridiculous). And that’s just in Genesis.

    Full review when I’m done, but this is a difficult and slow read. I hope to be finished by year’s end, reading front to back (Old and New Testaments; no cherry picking!).

    5. We live in outstanding times. If you focus on creating more good moments you’ll put yourself in a better position to realize this.

    In that way I think it’s better to do a “positivity challenge” instead of a “no negativity challenge.” During a positivity challenge you’re focused on doing good things and thinking good thoughts. It feels better to think “how can I make this a positive experience?” instead of “how can I make sure this isn’t a negative experience?” It’s subtle, but if I were to do this over I’d do a positivity challenge instead.

    What about you?

    If you joined in on last month’s challenge I’d like to know how it went for you. What did you learn? What was a struggle? What was easy?

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    I posted a new challenge for this month right here.